Firstly, this grandly named organisation operates out of what can only be described charitably as a shed:

Ok – perhaps it is not fair to judge a book by its cover.

They could be doing some amazing, cutting edge research in their shed in rural Oregon (not to disparage what is most likely a charming part of the world).

So let’s be fair and evaluate the bona fides of the OISM by the quality of the research they conduct. After all they claim to conduct research into the following:

Current projects include work on the deamidation of peptides and proteins as it relates to fundamental biochemistry and to protein aggregation diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease; research on improved techniques for medical diagnosis; improvement in precollege education curricula, especially in the sciences; and improved civilian emergency preparedness.

In other words they sell kits to survive a nuclear war.

More interestingly they claim to have found a cure for cancer. No really they do.

Let me step you through this discovery of mine.

First, let’s start at the OISM homepage:

Note the left hand navigation menu and the option “Nutrition and Cancer”? This is what you get after clicking on the link:

Note the text:

This website presents a paper on Nutrition and Cancer that may well be the most important information a cancer patient can find to help him fight this dread disease.

Clicking the link takes you to yet another page:

Let me say for the record, this is really bad web design: three-click-rule be damned.

They’ve buried the “most important information a cancer patient can find” in a thicket of interlinked pages lacking a consistent design or user experience. It’s like they don’t want you to find it!

A surgeon telephoned me to ask some questions about this diet. During the conversation, he told me why he had become interested in it (to the great displeasure of his colleagues).

A patient had come to him in whose throat was growing a completely inoperable and soon-to-be-fatal cancer. He told the patient that there was nothing he could do for him and that he would soon die.

The patient, however, went to Ann Wigmore’s establishment and started eating their initial diet of strictly raw fruits and vegetables. He pursued this fanatically, however, and never switched to Wigmore and Hunsberger’s phase-two diet including additional staples.

Many months later, the patient returned to the surgeon. The surgeon told me that there were three things that were unusual about this patient.

1. He was back. He should already have been long dead.

2. There was not a trace of cancer in his throat.

3. He looked like he had just stepped out of a Nazi or Communist concentration camp. The patient was almost dead of malnutrition. He was a walking skeleton.

The surgeon nursed him back to good nutritional health – but the cancer never returned.

Just so you know, the “raw fruit and vegetable” diet is pure alternative-medicine crapola.

What they are suggesting is a version of a macrobiotic diet: as far as science is concerned, it is totally implausible as a cure. Actually, it may be dangerous to cancer patients who elect to follow it.

It is one of the many alternative cures to cancer sold by hucksters who prey on those dealing with a life threatening disease.

There are hundreds of alternative cancer therapies. You may hear about them from friends and family, or come across them in books, on the Internet or on radio, TV, etc. There is no science-based evidence to prove they can treat, control or cure any type of cancer.

But what our friends at the OISM claim is what experts in the field call “woo”.

To quote the CCV, promoters of such therapies are acting unethically:

Unfortunately, there are people who falsely promote treatments which don’t work or are even dangerous as ‘cancer cures.’ There are also people who wrongly claim that mainstream or conventional treatments such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormone therapies don’t work. These people are acting unethically.

Whose opinion do you trust?

The peer-reviewed work of John and his team, or the “We have a cure for cancer!” woo from the cranks at OISM?

——

[Note: I will not be sanctioning a discussion on the merits alternative treatments: the evidence against them is compelling. Nor will I allow this bog to be hijacked by promoters of therapies known to be dangerous to people undergoing treatment for cancer and/or other serious illnesses.]

Mike, given that you regularly quote Desmogblog, an organisation funded by convicted money launderer John Lefebvre, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lefebvre , its a little rich suggesting the Oregon Petition should be ignored because one of the originators of the petition is a bit dodgy.

Despite Desmogblog’s (which did I mention – is funded by a convicted criminal) attempted smear on other originators of the petition, Willy Soon, Fred Seitz and Sallie Baliunas are well credentialed researchers.

But they are hardly the most prominent signatories. The list of the most prominent signatories of the petition, physicists like Edward Teller and Freeman Dyson, reads like a who’s who of 20th century Physics.

Lets not forget the hilarious CBS incident, in which they had to blur out Edward Teller’s name, because they pulled his signature out of the pile of signatories at random, while dissing the quality of signatories – not noticing they had in their hand the signature of one of the physics greats of the 20th century.

Your other suggestion that people of such stature were somehow tricked into signing the petition because the paperwork looked official is also a little implausible. You don’t get a reputation as one of the greats of Physics by lending your reputation to every piece of cr@p which someone shoves in front of you.

So regardless of whether one of the originators of the petition is involved in dodgy health products (and I agree, they do look a bit dodgy), you can’t dismiss the fact that some of the world’s most famous scientists have lent their reputation to the call for the USA to reject Kyoto, and to reject similar attempts to curb CO2 emissions.

Lefebvre facilitated transfer of money to illegal gambling sites, and facilitated transfer of any “winnings” to punters. By allowing the name of his company to appear as the source of the bank transfer, rather than the name of the illegal gambling site, Lefebvre was in effect disguising the source of the money – laundering the profits made through illegal gambling by disguising the origin of bank transfers – laundering them.

But quoting Heartland, a paid disinformation provider, negates your argument. The support big tobacco, who have lost multiple lawsuits. In the scheme of things their evil dwarfs Lefebevre’s. Joe Bast defended Joe Camel, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Camel. Bast will prostitute himself for anything.

Gee Eric,the Oregon Petition has no credibility because it is the classic argument from authority! A common logical fallacy,.in fact the OP is a two-fer… an appeal to a big number as well, 31,000 sounds good…

The OP pretends to have weight through argument from authority,it is not an appeal to genuine science ‘domain’ experience and published relevant authority. Because John Doe took a degree in science in 1959,he is has the authority to dispute a specialist field’s findings? Nope. Never mind that John Doe does not use his degree,being employed in some other field. Never mind John Doe is dead [many of the signatories are,quite a few being added from an earlier incarnation] Never mind that the degree is in veterinary science,or dentistry. Never mind that the signatories with meteorology and climatology experience are a very small subset. Never mind that many signatories work in and around the petroleum industry. Never mind that many signatories are actually untraceable.

31,000 {mostly irrelevantly} degreed folks looks big, but is also a very small proportion of US science graduate numbers who could have signed under such a broad umbrella.

The OP is the ultimate zombie nonsense appeal,and it’s a great measure of Nova’s desperation that she needs to recycle crackpot chum-from a madman,to boot.

If you only accept advice from “domain experts”, how do you falsify pseudoscience? Do you have to wait until the parapsychologists finally declare there is no further point investigating the possibility that humans have psychic abilities? Do you wait for published homeopaths to declare their potions have no merit? Or do you allow scientists from closely related fields to review their work and declare “this is bullsh*t”?

Scientists like Edward Teller and Freeman Dyson, who created the first atom bomb, have a deep understanding of radiative transfer physics, a key area of climate dynamics. Scientists like Willie Soon have specialised in and researched solar terrestrial physics for decades. You can’t simply dismiss such people because didn’t share Phil Jones’ office.

As for “published work”, there are examples in the Climategate archive of Phil Jones and others attempting to have editors fired, when they allow papers which contradict their theories to be published, and discussing ways to suppress research which contradicts their POV. It *might* be because the papers are cr@p – but it could also be they are improperly restricting the scope of what is considered legitimate, to protect their reputations.

As for you dissing Oregon as an argument from authority – its a bit rich coming from someone who believes the holy writ of the IPCC.

Teller is one of those old buggers who has a deep investment in his own infallibility, and his part in the flowering of the post-war synthesis of science and industry. To him,such a downside to the miracle is not palatable. Legend,irrelevant,no work in the field.

Dyson has uttered nothing but motherhood statements about the philosophy of modelling. Assertions easily contextualised by comparison with the published thoughts of many genuinely experienced and active climate and meteorology experts. Dyson is superficial.

Willie Soon is deeply compromised by his funding.

The editors of the journal that published the paper that aggravated Jones and colleagues resigned in agreement with Jones et als position. Don’t you know anything? The paper was crap,the decision to publish was compromised and the offending editors co-editors resigned because they felt the reputation of the journal was tarnished by including the paper!

I have made the distinction between the logical fallacy the OP invokes –argument from authority–which is an appeal to social status,not core expertise– and argument by reference to genuine expertise,which is what an international subject field expert panel represents. You have failed to understand that distinction.

Talking of superficial platitudes, you haven’t provided any evidence to back up your BS.

As for Willie Soon taking money from a few private businesses, how about the possibility that government researchers are corrupted by the desire to win more funding for their research?

For example, Lewandowsky has won hundreds of thousands of dollars in new grants and a fellowship from the unfortunately partisan Royal Society since he took a high profile stance on climate denial.

It could be this is a legitimate reward for a principled effort to investigate a difficult area of psychopathology – or it could be he deliberately ignited a high profile controversy to cash in on the publicity.

As I’ve said several times, the evidence in the Climategate archive is that climate scientists believe – but what would one of them do if he suddenly had a lapse of faith? Would they give up the lucrative research grants, and face ostracisation from their former friends for turning to climate “denial”? Or would they simply stay quiet, keep making the same old noises, and continue to enjoy the perks of lavishly funded research grants?

“Lewandowsky has won hundreds of thousands of dollars in new grants and a fellowship from the unfortunately partisan Royal Society since he took a high profile stance on climate denial.”

Wrong. This was in the pipeline prior to writing his paper. As much as you and your equally moronic friends would like to try and rewrite the timeline about Lewandowsky’s move, it simply isn’t true. Your lies and distortions are tiresome.

‘BS’? Eric,you’re the guy who uncritically regurgitates the simply dimwitted spin on Baliunas and Soon,and the journal kerfuffle, without being able to present an explanation as to why three editors resigned ,fully disclosing their reasons. The episode is documented. It does not support your idiot framing,which you accepted with skepticism from liars for hire. Scientists are allowed to express disquiet at journal practises,and to present that disquiet as protest and boycott. Journal integrity is critical to science,and only scientists can look after it.

You’re the guy who continually ideates about ‘The Team’,having enthusiastically and unskeptically accepted that framing at face value,and about gravy trains and grants irresistibly inducing a generation of scientists to collude and conspire to generate a false canon. Only your sheer ignorance of work practices could keep the idea of such an unwieldy plot afloat…or your motivated rejectionism.

If government does not fund research into the basic nature and state of the commons,no one will. Private industry has narrow aims,serves limited social subsets,and has usually spends most of its time and money rewarding its executives and shareholders,privatising profits and socialising losses,and discovering new ways to make mess which it attempts to limit its financial exposure to. It is not fundamentally curious,curiosity is a means not and end in itself.

I wonder how many government employees outside climate science get to decide whether the government will fund their stay in a swanky hotel in Tahiti? Seems pretty lavish to me. Then of course we have all the regular junkets to major tourist spots like Cancun, Rio, Copenhagen…

looking forward to seeing you in Tahiti, we can
>enjoy some nice tropical drinks w/ umbrellas in them.
>
>where are you planning on staying by the way? I
>haven’t decided yet. The cheap options sound way
>to spartan to me, but the nicer options are so expensive!

…

Mike,
As I’ve booked the flights on frequent flyer miles, I’m wondering if I can
convince myself (my grant) that I can justify the hotel….

As a former governement scientist, I would sincerely like to thank the taxpayers of the country for allowing me to stay at the Hyatt Coolum while attending a soilborne diseases symposium with all expenses paid, plus travel allowance. Oh hang on….I thought it was only climate scientists on the gravy train? Guess I….and Eric…was wrong.

I’m not arguing against the idea that the government wastes money in many curious ways, I’m just suggesting that you can’t rule out the possibility that a government climate scientist might keep quiet about any doubts they might feel, because they enjoy the good life.

Suggesting that scientists who take industry money are unreliable scientific whores, but that we can always trust the word of government scientists, seems impossibly one sided. There are temptations on both sides.

‘The good life’…that’s for the private sector and you know it. Send the group financial controllers off to Victoria Falls for ten days with ex-heads of government motivational speakers and the Miami Sound Machine. Fly in the celebrity chef with team…

But PBS got their list from somewhere, unless they made it up. I guess you email the organisers, convince them you don’t want to abuse the list of signatories by trying to forge cheques or whatever, and view their originals, or electronic copies of the signature slips.

A few years ago,I checked out the OP in some detail using random names,searching the web of science,Google scholar,professional societies,etc.

In a few hundred names,I found ten dead ones,could not trace quite a few, found engineers,vets,medicos,dentists,oil company employees and contractors, a PhD in Maths who had published once in sixty years,a composer with an electrical engineering degree….mainly filler.

I did the same. I randomly selected 100 names (in case idiots question my use of the word ‘selected’ I used a random number generator to select numbers between 1 and 31000) and found a similar result. Either dead, non-published or past the use by date in the wrong field.

Monckton’s “cure” for AIDS was simply an intellectual exercise (I hope), a way of demonstrating almost any problem is solvable. From memory, his suggestion was that AIDS could be cured by forced internment and quarantine of all HIV carriers, isolating them from the general population, preventing any new infection.

Thankfully HIV is not, by any rational assessment, a disease which would require such drastic measures. Though I do see HIV / AIDS as a wakeup call – a disease like AIDS which could be transmitted like the flu would probably have wiped out the human race.

I guess though we need to count better funding for research into new methods to combat disease as yet another casualty of public cash draining climate madness.

But in any case, more than a little O/T – Monckton having a few odd views about the sky fairy doesn’t mean he is wrong about climate change. Though to be fair Einstein’s belief in god was his undoing as a scientist – he couldn’t bring himself to believe that God played dice with the Universe.

Trying to claim Einstein was religious is the same bullshit pushed by idiotic creationists so it’s no surprise you’d try the same crap Eric.

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” 1954

“Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of Nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.” 1936

Spinoza believed that God was the orderly universe we see around us. As I understand, Einstein’s problem with Quantum Physics is its implication of disorder and unpredictability – that you can never fully predict the future based on knowledge of the present. But I guess we’ll never know for sure.

Einstein famously rejected the assumptions of Quantum Physics, and spent a lot of the latter part of his life trying to find the flaw in it, because he could not accept that at its most fundamental level the Universe is random – that some events are unpredictable – that at the Quantum level, all you can predict is the probability of some events, not whether they will actually happen.

So, famous scientists, outside their field, can be wrong. Einstein was wrong about quantum physics. Therefore Dyson is wrong about AGW. Deniar logic is wondrous to behold. Watch, I shall now make zero equal one and turn lead into gold.

So, famous scientists, outside their field, can be wrong. Einstein was wrong about quantum physics.

Quantum Physics was very much a development of Einstein’s ideas. Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his explanation of the photo-electric effect, the theory that electrons orbiting atoms could only receive energy at discrete levels – fixed quanta of energy.

In a group of more than 30,000 people, there are many individuals with names similar or identical to other signatories, or to non-signatories – real or fictional. Opponents of the petition project sometimes use this statistical fact in efforts to discredit the project. For examples, Perry Mason and Michael Fox are scientists who have signed the petition – who happen also to have names identical to fictional or real non-scientists.

It’s amusing to watch Eric’s gyrations attempting to justify the OISM’s lack of rigour whilst attempting to deny that 97% of climate scientists agree AGW is happening – a figure supported my multiple, independent, studies – published in meaningful journals. Long live Blog Science and all her fruitcake sailors!

Deciding whether or not to get the government to fund sipping cocktails in a Tahiti resort seems pretty lavish to me. And Lewandowsky for example has certainly done well out of the controversy he stirred up – well over a quarter of a million dollars worth of grants from the Australian Research Council and Royal Society since he made his debut.

Might not be very lavish from the POV of say an episode of the TV series Dallas, but it seems pretty cushy to me.

My point is there are a lot of perks to being a government scientist who promotes ideas politicians want to hear.

I’ve had my taste of the good life – drinking cocktails with bankers in London Docklands, holidays in the Caribbean, trips to the Middle East and Asia. I gave it up because I wanted to spend more time with my family – working 12 – 14 hours in the city, including some weekends, and spending time away on business, I just wasn’t seeing enough of them.

If it’s lavish energy entertainment, with no scientists in view, try the three nights and 750 tents of free drinks and food of corporate entertainment before the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. I did, courtesy of my energy friends. Sure beats bringing your own tea bags to drink in a university lab.

Jones conceded that he did not usually publish raw data from weather stations, which was often covered by confidentiality agreements, nor the computer codes he used to analyse the data. “It hasn’t been standard practice to do that. Maybe it should, but it’s not,” he said.

Asked whether other climate scientists reviewing his papers ever required such data, he said, “They’ve never asked.” In response to a specific question about why he had failed to grant freelance researcher Warwick Hughes access to data, he said simply, “We had a lot of work and resources tied up in it.”

If Jones is to be believed, in climate science, you don’t actually get your hands dirty and actually *review* another chap’s paper, ask for data and method, and check some calculations – you just take the other chap’s word for it. At least, this is the case, if the person submitting the paper is the mighty Phil Jones.

Phil Jones is claiming, out of the 50 papers or whatever which he published, no reviewer ever asked to see his data or method.

Assuming that reviewers were chosen randomly from climate research institutions across the world, that is 100 geographically scattered climate scientists (2 reviewers per paper) who *never* asked to see Jones’ method or data.

So either Phil Jones is a liar, or the practice of not properly reviewing the papers of prominent climate scientists (or maybe just Phil Jones?) is widespread.

How is that Jones statement an indicator of ‘lack of rigor’? It’s a statement about disclosure of supplementary info,not about the rigor or methodology which were published and available. Independent researchers can access and aggregate their data according to the methodology and can write their own code.

You get this wrong every time. It is deliberate,You know better.

Warwick Hughes papers? Where are they? He has a website. Are they self-published and available there?

You never ask,every time,It is deliberate.You know better.

We understand you,Eric…. hardly surprising,given the repetition Same old same old.

Independent researchers can access and aggregate their data according to the methodology and can write their own code.

I’m not arguing against the need for researchers to independently write their own code, what I am arguing is that data and code should be available – otherwise you can’t perform the most basic checks, such as whether running code against the supplied data produces the reported results.

If your attempt to replicate an experiment produces a different result, and code is not available, yet you believe you followed the description of the method correctly, your only hope of discovering why your result is different is to try to guess the mistake made by the other author, and replicate it.

Let’s imagine that no one wanted to ‘check Jones’ work’ because of his mastery of the famous Welsh Death Stare….

So other groups accessed the collecting agencies, downloaded the data,designed their own methods,wrote their own code and produced regional and global temperature data sets…Jones’ Death Stare is pure danger after all.

Then their projects produced nearly identical results. Agreement at the highest level.

The Oregon Petition was started in 1998 and still includes people who signed it last century.
I used to be skeptical of Global Warming, but I changed my mind about 25 years ago. Some of the people who signed it before could have changed their minds by now as well.

Cook messed up – he missed papers which contradicted the IPCC consensus, and mid classified papers which substantially disagreed, e.g including papers which suggest only 50% of warming is due to CO2 in his 97%.

What a waste of effort – 12000 papers, a team of 10 people spending half an hour or less on each paper could have correctly classified each paper in 3 months.

The IPCC estimate of 3c / doubling is not based on CO2 forcing, it is based on CO2 amplification of water vapour forcing.

CO2 alone can only deliver around 1c / doubling – without the water vapour amplification of 2c / doubling, you’ve got nothing.

The key prediction of this hypothetical amplification is the equatorial tropospheric hotspot. The lack of a hotspot, the failure of a key prediction, would falsify a normal scientific theory – but climate seance doesn’t do falsification.

How much does water vapour amplify CO2 warming? Without any feedbacks, a doubling of CO2 would warm the globe around 1°C. Taken on its own, water vapour feedback roughly doubles the amount of CO2 warming. When other feedbacks are included (eg – loss of albedo due to melting ice), the total warming from a doubling of CO2 is around 3°C (Held 2000).

Empirical observations of water vapour feedback and climate sensitivity
The amplifying effect of water vapor has been observed in empirical studies such as Soden 2001 which observed the global cooling after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. The cooling led to atmospheric drying which amplified the temperature drop. A climate sensitivity of around 3°C is also confirmed by numerous empirical studies examining how climate has responded to various forcings in the past.

Satellites have observed an increase in atmospheric water vapour by about 0.41 kg/m² per decade since 1988. A detection and attribution study (Santer 2007), otherwise known as “fingerprinting”, was employed to identify the cause of the rising water vapour levels. Fingerprinting involves rigorous statistical tests of the different possible explanations for a change in some property of the climate system.

Results from 22 different climate models (virtually all of the world’s major climate models) were pooled and found the recent increase in moisture content over the bulk of the world’s oceans is not due to solar forcing or gradual recovery from the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. The primary driver of ‘atmospheric moistening’ was found to be the increase in CO2 caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

Chief among the mechanisms thought to amplify the global climate response to increased concentrations of trace gases is the atmospheric water vapour feedback. As the oceans and atmosphere warm, there is increased evaporation, and it has been generally thought that the additional moisture then adds to the greenhouse effect by trapping more infrared radiation. Recently, it has been suggested that general circulation models used for evaluating climate change overestimate this response, and that increased convection in a warmer climate would actually dry the middle and upper troposphere by means of associated compensatory subsidence1. We use some new satellite-generated water vapour data to investigate this question. From a comparison of summer and winter moisture values in regions of the middle and upper troposphere that have previously been difficult to observe with confidence, we find that, as the hemispheres warm, increased convection leads to increased water vapour above 500 mbar in approximate quantitative agreement with the results from current climate models. The same conclusion is reached by comparing the tropical western and eastern Pacific regions. Thus, we conclude that the water vapour feedback is not overestimated in models and should amplify the climate response to increased trace-gas concentrations.

We make use of microwave measurements of the tropical free tropospheric relative humidity (FTH) to evaluate the extent to which the water vapor distribution in four general circulation models is faithful to reality. The comparison is performed in the tropics by sorting the FTH in dynamical regimes defined upon the 500 hPa vertical velocity. Because microwave radiation penetrates non-rainy and warm clouds, we are able to estimate the FTH over most of the dynamical regimes that characterize the tropics. The comparisons reveal that two models simulate a free troposphere drier than observed (< 10%), while the others agree with the observations. Despite some differences, the level of agreement is good enough to lend confidence in the representation of atmospheric moistening processes. A climate change scenario, tested on two models, shows a tendency to maintain the FTH to an almost fixed value be it an ascending or a subsiding regime.

OK,Eric…let’s look at the first example…. ah,an Idso rejects the classification of his paper…well,he would wouldn’t he! . CO2 science disinformers have form.

Idso et al’s paper does “implicitly endorse AGW without minimising it” as the Cook classification stands. It most certainly does not reject warming as a factor or as a major one. The enhancement of spring branch growth is argued by Idso to be ‘quite likely/could be’ solely attributable to the increased CO2 content of the air cannot dismiss the temperature argument,and in fact in the abstract Idso claims his finding might explain 2 of the 7 days seasonal advance observed! So he does not after all claim that his work offers an explanation for all the change observed. This implicitly acknowledges warming as the major [the other 5 days] factor in this phenological issue. The Idso et al argument,a partial explanation at its most ambitious, is advanced very tentatively;there is no possible way it can be seen as a rejection of AGW except by semantic torture,and can be seen as an implicit endorsement.

Let’s look at example 2.Scafetta’s claim…well,he flops about basing his comments on a false claim about the IPCC’s position on attribution:

Scafetta: “Please note that it is very important to clarify that the AGW advocated by the IPCC has always claimed that 90-100% of the warming observed since 1900 is due to anthropogenic emissions.”

Bullshit! AR4 2007 chapter 9 Executive summary on attributions: “GHG forcing has very likely caused most of the observed warming over the last 50 years” [my emphasis]

Scafetta has made up an IPCC position. And uses that falsehood to rationalise his nonsense,

But, from his paper : “.. we estimate that the sun contributed as much as 45-50% of the 1900-2000 warming..” In black and white. Then in his offering to Watts he claims 40-70%…confused?…after saying that critics like me have always figured 50/50 natural / anthro… what a chump!

“Subject to the above caveats and those described in the text, the CRF/climate link therefore implies that the increased solar luminosity and reduced CRF over the previous century should have contributed a warming of 0.47 ± 0.19°K, while the rest should be mainly attributed to anthropogenic causes. Without any effect of cosmic rays, the increase in solar luminosity would correspond to an increased temperature of 0.16 ± 0.04°K.”

“Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimise”? Yes. ‘…the rest should be mainly attributed…’ not quantified,but endorsed as anthropogenic.

You can only read what’s in front of you. Shaviv’s ‘protestations’ to Watts are not in the paper,Eric.

Shaviv claims that it was the peer reviewers of his paper which made the paper appear to endorse the consensus

“Subject to the above caveats and those described in the text, the CRF/climate link therefore implies that the increased solar luminosity and reduced CRF over the previous century should have contributed a warming of 0.47 ± 0.19°K, while the rest should be mainly attributed to anthropogenic causes. Without any effect of cosmic rays, the increase in solar luminosity would correspond to an increased temperature of 0.16 ± 0.04°K”

A few points>The Shaviv paper is really,really fluffy,even without anyone taking a position on anything to do with climate. Huge assumptions about GCR influence on cloud formation lie within. We are better placed now to find these assumptions even more fluffy. Nobody is running around waving this paper as an active promotion of AGW,just that dispassionately,by its words,it endorses anthropogenic influence.

You have to understand the classification process Cook et al use. and the meaning of words. The paper ‘endorses’ as in accepts or acknowledges the reality of anthropogenic warming…it’s not looking for it, or cheering for it. He wants to explore the GCR/Sun thing in the main….[unless he wants to change his position for the sake of a spit with Anthony.]

How can very minor solar variability, even amplified by cosmic ray flux change, have caused “about half the warming observed today” if fast feedbacks sensitivity (S_ff) is 2C or lower?

Low S_ff means that the climate system is insensitive to radiative perturbation.

Presumably “the warming observed today” in this context means the ~0.8C increase in GAT over the last century or so plus the ~25×10^22J increase in OHC since the 1950s plus whatever occurred prior to measurements beginning etc.

This is the *transient* response, do not forget. The transient response so far. We’ve not even had one doubling of CO2 yet.

qavin’s response to Lindzen’s nonsense claim that we are already at 2 X CO2e

Lindzen’s point is fundamentally flawed. Temperatures will respond to net forcing – not just CO2, or CO2-eq, and net forcing is around 1.7 W/m2 from the pre-industrial – that is under 50% of the forcing from 2xCO2, not 76%, nor 80% nor ‘almost’ a doubling. Claims that we should have reached equilibrium with that forcing are equally risible. Lindzen is effectively assuming zero heat capacity in the oceans and that aerosol forcing is 0 W/m2 with no uncertainty. The statements he makes on this have only rhetorical content – no science. – gavin]

Yes, and Eric’s anti AGW hero, Freeman Dyson spent a year of his life working on this patently ludicrous project. If he and his fellow bomb jocks had had their way and managed to test some of their ideas, the world would be in a much worse position than it is in now.

Brilliance in an extremely narrow area of specialization does not necessarily equate to common sense. Dyson is also on record as stating that he believes in ESP, a rather unusual scientific position, and of course he has stated that he knows very little about climate science, and has no inclination to find out, as he is uninterested in the subject.

Quoting him as an authority is rather like asking a proctologist for an opinion on your forthcoming eye surgery.

Eric seems quite willing to risk his daughter’s future on the opinions of a minority of non-specialists just because they happen to be famous for something else.